Hearing that declaration, the plump elder's eyes nearly popped clean out of his head.
He jabbed a finger at Lin Dong's nose, his lips quivering for a long moment before he finally managed to squeeze out:
"You—you old lunatic! It's not enough that you're insane yourself—now you want to drag this child along with you?! This is a mortal body we're talking about!"
But before he could finish that sentence of condemnation—
"In you go!"
Mo Fan felt a massive force slam into his back. Lin Dong's withered, bony hand drove hard between his shoulder blades.
"What the—old man, you—"
Mo Fan's protest didn't even make it to a full syllable.
The world went black in an instant, and he was hurled—with absolutely zero ceremony—straight through the shimmering, radiant entrance of the [ Cloud Summit Mystic Realm ]!
No sensation of falling. No impact of landing.
When Mo Fan opened his eyes again, he found that his feet were not touching solid ground.
Around him stretched an endless, boundless sea of white clouds—a vast, hazy dreamscape.
No sky. No earth. No cardinal directions to orient by.
Mo Fan floated weightlessly in mid-air. An almost suffocating, absolute silence pressed in from every direction.
He instinctively swung his arm—and noticed that his body had taken on a semi-transparent quality, faintly radiating a dim, ghostly luminescence.
He hadn't even begun to adjust to this bizarre state when—
RUMBLE——!
The previously calm cloud sea erupted without warning—boiling, churning, roaring like water brought to a violent boil.
Under Mo Fan's horrified gaze...
The heavenly vault above split open with a tremendous crack, revealing an extremely massive fissure.
And then—slowly, inexorably—a single colossal eye emerged from the rift. It filled the heavens.
Condensed entirely from pure spiritual energy and mental force, it opened with the weight of something ancient and absolute.
The pupil held no emotion whatsoever. Only the cold, icy indifference of the Heavenly Dao itself.
HUM!
The moment that eye fixed its gaze upon him, a soul-crushing pressure descended onto Mo Fan's consciousness like a collapsing mountain.
"Ngh——!"
Mo Fan let out a strangled grunt of pain.
His semi-transparent soul-body was immediately compressed under that pressure—struggling just to maintain its shape, as if it might scatter into nothing at any moment.
He clenched his jaw and pushed back against the terrifying force trying to grind him apart.
After barely managing to adapt to the pressure, Mo Fan looked through the churning cloud sea and noticed something he hadn't seen before.
Directly beneath that colossal eye—standing as if they had always been there—were five ancient, majestic giant doors.
They floated silently above the cloud sea.
Each one was carved with impossibly intricate archaic runes, radiating an aura of age so deep it made the heart ache.
Then—
HUM——
From outside, Lin Dong's voice rolled through the mystic realm's cloud layers like distant heavenly thunder, detonating inside Mo Fan's mind:
"Listen carefully, boy!"
"This [ Cloud Summit Mystic Realm ] is a soul-cultivation trial ground left behind by the founding patriarch of Azure Cloud Sect! It does not cultivate the physical body, nor does it refine spiritual power—it forges the will and the soul of the cultivator!"
"What entered just now is only your soul-body. Your physical body remains outside the pagoda under my watch. It is absolutely safe!"
A rare note of genuine, earnest instruction entered Lin Dong's voice:
"You have no cultivation or mana—but over these past months, seeing the look in your eyes during life-and-death combat, this old man knows your will is extraordinary. Far beyond what any ordinary person possesses."
"These five doors represent the Five Stages of Heart Tempering. You can begin by entering the [ First Door ] on the far left."
"Remember—this old man cannot observe the specific illusions from outside. If you truly cannot hold on—if you feel your soul beginning to collapse—crush the Life Token at your waist immediately and call for help!"
"Do NOT try to push yourself too hard!"
The moment his voice faded—
Mo Fan lowered his head and found that a jade tablet had indeed materialized at the waist of his semi-transparent soul-body, emitting a faint cyan glow.
Tempering the will? The path of soul cultivation?
Mo Fan closed his hand around the jade tablet, feeling the faint coolness seeping from it. A deeply peculiar light flickered through his eyes.
He stopped resisting the pressure.
Instead, he drew a slow breath, met the gaze of the colossal eye overhead, and walked in long, unhurried strides toward the leftmost bronze door.
BANG.
He reached out without hesitation and pushed it open.
A dull, resonant impact rang out—the sound of something sealed for ten thousand years finally stirring.
The cloud sea around him was ripped away by a violent suction force, and the world before Mo Fan plunged into absolute darkness.
Then— The scene shifted with violent, jarring abruptness.
When Mo Fan's vision refocused, the cloud sea was gone.
He stood inside an enormous circular gladiator arena.
Towering, ruined stone walls rose on all sides, reaching into the clouds.
There was no sun in the sky—only a blazing, sourceless light so harsh it was nearly impossible to look at directly.
And around the perimeter of the arena...
Five massive black cages.
Mo Fan looked closer, and his pupils contracted sharply.
What was imprisoned in those black iron cages was nothing like ordinary demon beasts.
The remnant shades within radiated an aura so terrifying it made the soul itself tremble—these were the residual souls of primordial ancient beasts!
In the cage to the left, a [ Heaven-Swallowing Python ] coiled in endless loops—nearly a hundred zhang in length, its body armored in black scales. The toxic gas around it visibly warped and corroded the space itself.
In the cage to the right, crouched a [ Kun Peng ] hatchling—reduced to a mere remnant shade, and yet its wings, when spread, still blotted out the sky like a curtain of clouds, radiating an aura of primordial antiquity that pressed against the chest.
"Holy shit..."
Even Mo Fan, faced with the sheer visual impact of these ancient horrors, couldn't stop the profanity that slipped out, his scalp tingling.
Right at that moment—
Hovering in the air above the arena like a holographic projection, an eye-catching line of large, blazing golden characters slowly materialized:
[ Cloud Summit Mystic Realm: Heart-Tempering Arena ]
[ Stage One: The Soul's First Cry ]
(Completion Condition: With a weak and nascent soul, make your first stand—endure the crushing pressure of the ancient beasts for one full incense stick's time.)
With a weak and nascent soul...
As the golden text slowly dissolved into the air—
The ground beneath Mo Fan's feet suddenly lit up.
A teleportation formation activated and deposited him directly into the exact center of the arena.
RUMBLE. RUMBLE. RUMBLE.
A series of earth-shaking detonations rang out around the arena's perimeter.
The five massive energy cages containing the primordial beast souls slowly turned transparent—and vanished.
ROAR——! HISSSSS——!
The ancient beast souls, which had been dormant until this moment, slowly opened their lantern-sized, crimson, and tyranny-filled eyes as their cages disappeared.
All five heads turned at once.
Five pairs of enormous eyes—blazing with brutal, bloodthirsty light—locked dead onto the single, impossibly small human figure standing alone in the center of the arena.